Tiqets expands distribution with Trip.com Group integration

Travelers using Trip.com Group ’s brands, including Trip.com , Ctrip and Skyscanner , can now book entry directly in those platforms at more than 4,000 museums and attractions around the world through an integration with Tiqets .

Tiqets founder and president Luuc Elzinga says the company will be announcing another partnership with an APAC-based OTA in the near future. Existing partners in that region include Taiwan-based KKDay , Korea-based Waug and Japan-based Veltra .

Prior to this direct connection, Tiqets and Trip.com Group were connected through a third-party.

Elzinga says a benefit of this new automated, API integration is that it gives Trip.com Group customers access to real-time availability for all of the experiences on its platform, located in Europe, the United Kingdom, the Middle East and the United States, with “skip-the-line” options, flexible cancellation options and booking in local languages and currencies.

And he says, from the perspective of museums and attractions, partnerships such as this make Tiqets a desirable distribution channel.

“You want to create interesting demand channels for the scattered supply that is in the market. If you combine that more and more, it creates more value in the platform... that opens the museums and attractions that were difficult to contract, maybe because they don’t work with third parties, etc.,” Elzinga says.

“And if you have more museums and attractions and tours and packages and passes, then it opens up a greater amount of distribution partners that want to tap into that one connection that gives them access to all. So it is constantly helping to grow our platform and also to add value to both sides.”

Elzinga says Tiqets’ other OTA partners, totaling more than 3,000 around the world, have found that the ability to offer their customers access to museums and attractions in their own app, with last-minute booking and mobile ticketing, is helping to them to attract and engage customers.

“These experiences are the things that people get happy with. It’s not the hotel or the flight anymore – that’s a commodity,” he says.

“That’s why a lot of OTAs are stepping in the tours and activities – not only because it can generate money from itself but also because it really helps to get loyalty over time with their customer base.”

Tiqets reports bookings across the U.K. and Europe have increased by 400% in the second quarter of this year compared to Q2 last year. And from Q1 to Q2 this year, museum and attraction bookings grew by 240% in the U.K. and 200% in Europe.